Talking baseball with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns

For more than 30 years, Ken Burns has created documentaries about United States history.

Baseball is part of that history, and Burns' Emmy Award-winning series on the sport 20 years ago examined the national pastime through the years.

Burns will be at Rollins on Monday night to speak about another of his projects, America's national parks, but the Orlando Sentinel wanted to talk to him about — what else? — baseball.

Orlando Sentinel: How often do you get asked about your series on baseball?

Ken Burns: "Every single day. Amazing letters, people stopping on the street and talking about what it meant to them, and it reminded them of their dad or mom or brother, sister, son. It makes me as happy as anything I know.''

OS: Which inning of your documentary [the series was divided into nine parts, or innings] was your favorite?

KB: "I like the sixth and seventh innings the best. Sixth because it's Jackie Robinson coming up. The seventh because it's called, "The Capital of Baseball." It's about the [New York] Giants, Dodgers and Yankees running everything. I like the energy in it, the jazz music, the story and emotion.''

OS: Why make a follow-up, "The Tenth Inning," in 2010?

KB: "When the series was released in 1994, there was a strike, and that got us thinking, "Wow, this is a different kind of baseball game." Then the steroid stuff happened, and we began to talk about needing to update the thing. Then in 2004, my beloved Boston Red Sox won the World Series for the first time since 1918, and I said, "OK. We're definitely doing an update." I hope I'll be able to do an 11th and 12th down the line.''

OS: Why baseball?

KB: "It's just the greatest game that's ever been invented, period, full stop. I like other sports — football, basketball — but all of them are going up and down a field. It's the ball or puck that scores. In baseball, it's the human being that scores.

"Each park is irregular. Whoever heard, "We're going to Boston, where the court is shorter. We're going to Dallas, where the gridiron is 110 yards?" And a .300 hitter means the same thing to my four daughters as it did to me, but more importantly to my grandfather and great-grandfather, who fought in the Civil War.''

OS: If you could pick the brains of three people throughout baseball history, who would they be?

KB: "Jackie Robinson. I'm making a documentary about him right now. Babe Ruth because in some ways, he's the most important person in the game, and then it's a tossup between Ty Cobb and Barry Bonds. I want to know what makes them who they are — the racist in one case and pathological cheater in the other.''

OS: If you had a Hall of Fame vote, how would you handle an eligible player who had used performance-enhancing drugs?

KB: "Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, two people who I have zero respect for as human beings, should be in the Hall of Fame, but I don't believe Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa or some of the others who were one-note Charlies should be. [Clemens and Bonds] deserved to be in before they made the fateful decision.''

KB: "He's the Abe Lincoln of baseball, not without flaws but certainly the greatest. For all the fact that pretty bad stuff happened on his watch, he's had a remarkable record. Every player is a multimillionaire, and every team is worth hundreds [of millions], if not billions, of dollars. He can look back with pride and resign.''

OS: What is his most significant accomplishment?

KB: "First, understanding the damage done by the strike and initiating a collective bargaining agreement that has kept labor peace in baseball for the last 20 years. Second, much belated, but nonetheless, strict enforcement of what is now the toughest drug policy of all professional sports.''